From The Marketing Side
Which Institutions Are
More Profitable?
A regression model is the tool that
will enable us to determine the prof-
itability of marketing to a particular
school or district. It will also predict
the likeliness of our profitability in
marketing to schools with whom we
currently do not do business.
A regression model seeks to find
relationships between our return
on investment from our customer
institutions and the data that defines
those schools. It determines which
data has a statistically significant rela-
tionship with the institution’s prof-
itability and to what degree. Then,
it uses that data to rank the schools
and districts that are not currently
customers and puts them in priority
from most likely to become profitable
customers to least likely.
Without a regression model, we
must choose our own data elements
in order to select the prospect schools
and districts for our promotion cam-
paigns. However, we can only treat
the importance of each field of data
equally whereas a regression model
weights the importance of various
fields of data.
Data Fields Are Not of
Equal Importance
For example, if we decide that the
expenditure per pupil and the enroll-
ment of a school or district are im-
portant in qualifying prospect schools,
we have to treat the importance of
each of these fields of data equally. We
cannot designate that expenditure per
pupil is twice as important as enroll-
ment when choosing our prospect
schools and districts. A regression
model can.
A regression model analyzes the
profitability of our customer schools
relative to the data selections avail-
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able and assigns a score for each data
variable it considers to be statistically
significant. Then, it adds the scores
for each data element and ranks all
the schools and districts from best to
worst based on their total score.
Marketing Tools Can Make
a Difference
Among the reasons that relatively
few school marketers use regression
models are that they are complicated
and based on statistical mathematic
theory. I work with several models and
have for a number of years so I have
come to accept the concepts that drive
them. While these models cannot actu-
ally predict the future, they do improve
one’s chances for success.
They are particularly useful in
these times. Regression models tell
you which schools and districts you
should include in your marketing
campaigns and which you should
not. If you make multiple promotion
campaigns throughout the year, they
enable you to vary your penetration
of the market based on the statistical
likeliness of financial success. Finally,
these models are remarkably afford-
able, in most cases adding just pen-
nies to your promotion expense per
prospect.
You can participate in SMRI’s
Quarterly Survey of School Marketers.
Only participants receive the results
of the survey. Simply go to http://www.
smriinc.com/survey.html to sign up.
BOB STIMOLO, EDmarket’s Official
School Market Consultant, is President
of School Market Research Institute a full
service marketing
and research firm.
SMRI provides
direct mail and
email lists and
services exclu-
sively to school
marketers. To
learn more go
to www.smriinc.
com or contact
Kathleen Bill at 800-838-3444 x201.